Diver Tells of Stethem’s Groans, Belief He Would Be Next to Die in Hijacking

FRANKFURT, West Germany — Navy diver Clinton Suggs testified today he figured he had just five minutes to live after Arab hijackers shot fellow sailor Robert Stethem and threw him out of a hijacked TWA jetliner.

Suggs testified at the murder and air piracy trial of Mohammed Ali Hamadi. The Lebanese Shia Muslim is charged in the June, 1985, hijacking, in which Stethem, a 23-year-old U.S. Navy diver, was killed and 39 Americans were held hostage for 17 days.

Stethem was “still alive” after being shot and thrown onto the runway in Beirut, Suggs said, adding: “I could hear him moaning.”

Suggs also said Hamadi remarked, “Let the pig suffer,” when a flight attendant asked the hijackers if she could loosen Stethem’s bound hands.

Stethem and Suggs had been taken to the plane’s first-class section after the flight was diverted to Beirut.

“I heard a lot of screaming to the tower in Arabic . . . I couldn’t understand it,” he testified.

“Then I could hear Robert (Stethem) scream,” the 32-year-old Suggs said.

‘I Heard Him Scream’

Other witnesses, including flight attendant Uli Derickson, have said Stethem never made a sound while being beaten by the hijackers. But Suggs, when asked about that testimony, maintained: “I heard him scream.”

“Then I hear a gunshot, the door open, and a second shot,” Suggs said. “At this point I just listened for Bob; he was still alive and I could hear him moaning.”

Although he was blindfolded, and did not see who beat or shot Stethem before his body was thrown onto the runway, Suggs said he knew when the door opened “because you can feel it with the draft, and the engines were louder.”

Suggs said that after Stethem was shot, he heard one hijacker say: “One more in five minutes.”

“In what language was this said?” prosecutor Peter Korneck asked.

“In broken English,” Suggs replied.

He continued: “I made up my mind that if my turn was next--I’m ready, but I’m not going to scream.”

Suggs said he could not say which hijacker said one more person would die in five minutes, but added: “I felt I would be the next to die.”